Missing link found between brain, immune system -- with major disease implications. Implications profound for neurological diseases from autism to Alzheimer's to multiple sclerosis In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer's disease to multiple sclerosis. "Instead of asking, 'How do we study the immune response of the brain? ' 'Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?
' now we can approach this mechanistically. New Discovery in Human Body Even Kipnis was skeptical initially. 'Very Well Hidden' Alzheimer's, Autism, MS and Beyond. Rethinking the Placebo Effect: How Our Minds Actually Affect Our Bodies. By Maria Popova The startling physiological effects of loneliness, optimism, and meditation. In 2013, Neil deGrasse Tyson hosted a mind-bending debate on the nature of “nothing” — an inquiry that has occupied thinkers since the dawn of recorded thought and permeates everything from Hamlet’s iconic question to the boldest frontiers of quantum physics.
That’s precisely what New Scientist editor-in-chief Jeremy Webb explores with a kaleidoscopic lens in Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion (public library | IndieBound) — a terrific collection of essays and articles exploring everything from vacuum to the birth and death of the universe to how the concept of zero gained wide acceptance in the 17th century after being shunned as a dangerous innovation for 400 years. As Webb elegantly puts it, “nothing becomes a lens through which we can explore the universe around us and even what it is to be human. It reveals past attitudes and present thinking.” Donating = Loving.
Vitamin D: evolutionary, physiological and... [Curr Drug Targets. 2011. The Cornish Moon Landings. Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas — The Physics arXiv Blog. There’s a quiet revolution underway in theoretical physics. For as long as the discipline has existed, physicists have been reluctant to discuss consciousness, considering it a topic for quacks and charlatans.
Indeed, the mere mention of the ‘c’ word could ruin careers. That’s finally beginning to change thanks to a fundamentally new way of thinking about consciousness that is spreading like wildfire through the theoretical physics community. And while the problem of consciousness is far from being solved, it is finally being formulated mathematically as a set of problems that researchers can understand, explore and discuss. Today, Max Tegmark, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, sets out the fundamental problems that this new way of thinking raises. He shows how these problems can be formulated in terms of quantum mechanics and information theory.
Tegmark does not have an answer.